The power consumption of laptop computers, especially the power of CPUs used in laptop computers is increasing. For instance, the total power of a laptop computer is usually around 10 watts and now it is becoming 20 to 30 W. The CPU power has been increased from 2 to 8 W and in the future could be in the 15 W range and higher. Most of this power will eventually be dissipated as heat to the surroundings. Getting more heat out of the laptop computer is becoming a critical factor in the laptop computer business.
Portable computers, such as laptop computers, are designed to be compact and small. Thus there is limited space to incorporate cooling systems. Thus portable computers cannot operate using the fastest CPU chips available. This presents a problem when the portable computer is used as a workstation, as a desk top computer or in place of a desk top computer. Typically a portable computer is used as a workstation by inserting the portable computer into a frame, referred to as a docking station. The docking station provides additional functionality to the portable computer, such as additional disk drives and CD drives. The docking station has ports through which a large keyboard and a large screen monitor can be connected to the portable computer. The portable computer when engaged with a docking station and used as a workstation has the disadvantage as compared with a desktop computer of not functioning as fast as the desktop computer. This is because the desktop computer has a cooling system which can cool the desktop computer which has a CPU which runs too hot to be included in the portable computer. Applications running on the portable computer engaged with a docking station have slower performance than the desktop and some applications either cannot run on the in a portable computer engaged with docking station or run so slow as to be effectively unusable. Applicants invention solves this problem.
A portable computer is intended to be transported around by a user. As described above, the portable computer is commonly used as a workstation by inserting into a docking station. A user typically has a docking station in their office and typically takes the portable computer on business or for use at home. If the user takes the portable computer home and forgets to bring it into the office, the user has no computer to use in the office. This prevents the user from accessing systems such as e-mail, the internet and using word processors. Applicants invention solves this problem.